cadblaster
Silver Member
Well I had a heck of a fun time in the garage this past weekend. I was working on getting my 3 pt snow thrower all ready to go for the winter. I bought it used so it needed a little TLC. A bit of rust removal, repainting, lubricating, and a new chute-rotating cable did the trick. After seeing how long the 2210 was with both the loader and snow thrower, I decided to leave off the loader, and just put some front weights on it instead. This is where It got interesting.
The integral front weight bracket on the 2210 can accommodate up to 5 weights. As it turns out, with the hood guard on, you can only put on 4 weights. The bolts that hold the hood guard interfere with the weights.
Well, this left me with a few options, leave the hood guard in place, and only put on 4 weights, or take it off and put on 5 weights, or change everything to make it work. I chose the latter, but I'll get to that in a second.
First of all in order to get the weights to fit at all, they needed to be touched up with the grinder. There is way too much casting flash on the weights to allow the restraining rod to fit at all. (BTW, I tried to find a P/N for the rod, but couldn't. I got lucky with the one I got with the weights. It was from an old 650 and it fits perfectly.)
After getting the weights to fit better, I then tackled the problem with the hood guard. To start with, my hood guard did not fit correctly. Not even close. The OUTSIDE dimensions of the hood guard tabs were at all most ½" less than the INSIDE dimensions of the (tractor) mounting plates. That meant that both the tabs and/or the mounting plates were bending significantly. In order to remove the pins from the hood guard, I had to tighten the bolts, remove the (jammed) spring clips then loosen the bolts to remove the pins. This was not acceptable. I thought about going back to JD for the solution, but I figured that would be a useless if not time consuming endeavor. My second option was to move the mounting tabs on the hood guard. So out came the grinder again.
To make a long story short, I re-welded the mounting tabs so they are now on the outside of the mounting bracket. This allows the 5 weights to fit with ease. To allow the loader arms to clear, I did have to swap the bolt and pin positions to make this work. I bought new bolts because the upper holes are round and not suitable for the original carriage heads. I also had to bevel the leading edge of the hood guard tabs to give the loader arms more clearance. In retrospect, if the hood guard fit correctly in the first place I could have done the pin/bolt swap in the first place. Though this still may have not given enough clearance for the weights. All in all I'm happy with the results, my hood guard fits absolutely perfectly now, and I'll never have to mess with it again.
The integral front weight bracket on the 2210 can accommodate up to 5 weights. As it turns out, with the hood guard on, you can only put on 4 weights. The bolts that hold the hood guard interfere with the weights.
Well, this left me with a few options, leave the hood guard in place, and only put on 4 weights, or take it off and put on 5 weights, or change everything to make it work. I chose the latter, but I'll get to that in a second.
First of all in order to get the weights to fit at all, they needed to be touched up with the grinder. There is way too much casting flash on the weights to allow the restraining rod to fit at all. (BTW, I tried to find a P/N for the rod, but couldn't. I got lucky with the one I got with the weights. It was from an old 650 and it fits perfectly.)
After getting the weights to fit better, I then tackled the problem with the hood guard. To start with, my hood guard did not fit correctly. Not even close. The OUTSIDE dimensions of the hood guard tabs were at all most ½" less than the INSIDE dimensions of the (tractor) mounting plates. That meant that both the tabs and/or the mounting plates were bending significantly. In order to remove the pins from the hood guard, I had to tighten the bolts, remove the (jammed) spring clips then loosen the bolts to remove the pins. This was not acceptable. I thought about going back to JD for the solution, but I figured that would be a useless if not time consuming endeavor. My second option was to move the mounting tabs on the hood guard. So out came the grinder again.
To make a long story short, I re-welded the mounting tabs so they are now on the outside of the mounting bracket. This allows the 5 weights to fit with ease. To allow the loader arms to clear, I did have to swap the bolt and pin positions to make this work. I bought new bolts because the upper holes are round and not suitable for the original carriage heads. I also had to bevel the leading edge of the hood guard tabs to give the loader arms more clearance. In retrospect, if the hood guard fit correctly in the first place I could have done the pin/bolt swap in the first place. Though this still may have not given enough clearance for the weights. All in all I'm happy with the results, my hood guard fits absolutely perfectly now, and I'll never have to mess with it again.
